Back to top

ICT competences required by

Teacher

• Use of data projector if available
  
• Ability to open and show the ready made PowerPoint presentation The Great Fire of London.ppt
• Ability to demonstrate dragging and dropping phrases in Word or Textease

Child

• Ability to drag and drop phrases in Word or Textease

• Why the fire spread so far for so long?
• What makes cities safer from great fires today?
  

Resources

• Computer with large screen/data projector for whole class teaching
• Interactive whiteboard (optional)
• ICT Suite/set of laptop computers
• Presentation software e.g. PowerPoint
• Ready made PowerPoint presentation The Great Fire of London.ppt
• Word or Textease 2000 Matching.doc or Matching.t2
  

Vocabulary

timber framed, thatched, flames, roaring, sparks, ruined, fire-brigade, fire hooks, shelter etc.

Preparatory work

Download the PowerPoint presentation from the website: http://www.ict.oxon-lea.gov.uk/best_practice/great_fire/ The Great Fire of London.ppt on to the demonstration computer. To download the file right click on the link and select Save As. Save the presentation in a folder or location where it will be easily accessible when you need to view it. If the pupils will use Word or Talking First Word download the document matching.doc and put it into a shared area on the network or on each pupil’s computer. If pupils will use Textease download the Textease document matching.t2 instead. Teachers should familiarise themselves with the presentation and drag and drop exercise.
Back to top

Show the pupils the PowerPoint Slides 1 - 2 which introduces the main objectives of this session i.e.
Why did the Fire of London spread so quickly? Why did it spread so far? Why did the fire stay alight for so long?

Show Slide 3 - Pictures of overhanging buildings.
Q How would you describe this street scene?
The houses are very close together, thatched roofs, overhanging eaves, constructed from wattle and daub, wood, no gardens to space the houses out, no garages
Q How did these conditions help the fire spread?

Show Slide 4
Q What is happening here?
The teacher may have to lead the pupils to understand that the wind played a significant part in the spread of the fire.

Show Slide 5
Q What is happening here? Why?
People have taken to the river in boats and are sheltering from the fire under a bridge, which offered some protection, because it was made of stone.

Show Slide 6
Q What is happening here?
This picture shows fire hooks being used to remove roof tiles. Buckets of water are being passed up a ladder to the men on the roof. Someone is being lowered from a window.

Show Slide 7
Q So why did the fire spread so far and fast?
Reinforce the closeness of buildings, the wooden structures, thatched roofs, no fire-brigade and encourage the pupils to think who fights fires today.
Back to top

Main Activity

Pupils can now work in pairs at a computer. Show pupils how to open the file matching.doc or matching.t2 Read the statements through with them (Textease will read the statements for pupils as will Talking First Word, if these applications are available.)
Show pupils how to drag the text boxes to reposition them so that the statements make sense.
Pupils to put their names on the page and print out.

Plenary

Draw the pupils together. If an Interactive Whiteboard is available display the "Matching" exercise and quickly encourage pupils to come to the board and move the statements into the correct places. If not the teacher needs to display it using the projector and question the pupils and move with the mouse.

Finally ask the pupils to consider:
Q What makes cities safer from great fires today?
Fire brigade, more open spaces and space between houses, smoke alarms, sprinkler systems, fire extinguishers, fire resistant materials, modern building regulations/laws, less open fires, candles etc. in houses etc.
Back to top

Why use ICT

Demonstrating: Using ICT the teacher can effectively illustrate procedures needed in the Matching Activity to show pupils how to move statements into the correct places using drag and drop and how to confirm the sense of the statements using the speech facilities available in Talking First Word and Textease.

Accessing and analysing: ICT gives the opportunity to use a variety of approaches that incorporate pupils preferred learning styles. It allows access to information in multi-media format that can be easily differentiated to accommodate different learning styles and approaches. The use of ICT to quickly change the information provides the teacher with opportunities to engage with pupils and, in particular, facilitates analysis and interrogation.

Presenting, re-presenting and communicating: By gathering together quality images of the Great Fire of London, from a variety of sources, in multi-media format to demonstrate significant reasons for the spread of the fire. It puts the teacher in far greater control of the content than otherwise available by using a single text book and allows the pupils to view the same image simultaneously. . The presentation is more exciting and engaging, creating motivating outcomes it enables the teacher to focus pupils on specific features and further explore, unpack or elucidate the content. Once the presentation is created it forms a reusable resource that can be shared with colleagues.
The Matching activity is much more easily managed than a similar paper based activity.

Testing and confirming
In this vignette the use of ICT takes advantage of the opportunities provided by the speech facilities available in Talking First Word and Textease enabling pupils to work more independently and test and confirm what they have written to encourage independent work.